The increasing use of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers (collectively, “mobile devices”) to access information on the internet poses new challenges and new opportunities for internet content providers. For example, the form factors of mobile devices present new challenges due to their smaller screens and touch-based interface. Thus, websites designed for use on desktop computers or laptops may be difficult to use on a mobile device and can be frustrating to users accessing content via the mobile device. On the other hand, mobile devices also offer new opportunities because of new capabilities, such as the ability of users to store and access the internet outside of a traditional internet browser by using web applications (“apps”) from these devices, and the ability to access the internet in many different locations, including at a store, restaurant, or other business, or even while traveling to or traveling between such locations.
As a result of new mobile device technologies, internet content providers often develop dedicated “mobile-friendly” versions of their websites, as well as custom-designed apps tailored to the most popular mobile device platforms (e.g., iOS, Android, Windows Phone/8). Internet users have multiple ways to receive and access information on or from the internet using mobile devices, including by accessing URLs in the form of hyperlinks (“links”) from emails, QR codes, text messages, chats, or other text conversations, as well as via mobile websites and apps. However, these many ways of receiving and accessing internet information may not be integrated with one another, which may detract from the user experience of accessing internet content using a mobile device. For example, internet content providers' web servers may not be programmed to detect whether a URL contained in an email campaign is being accessed from a mobile device, thus linking the user to the full version of the website, rather than the mobile-friendly version. Another example is that the mobile device on which a URL for a social media platform is being accessed may not detect that the device contains an app for the social media platform, instead routing the user to the internet browser for viewing the full version of the social media website. This scenario may greatly detract from the user experience because often apps for social media platforms remain “logged-in,” resulting in an uninterrupted transition to access the content in an app. But, to access the same mobile platform through an internet browser, the user may need to re-enter login information and then navigate to the particular page, which adds several additional steps and additional time to the process. Such an exercise can be frustrating for the user and may discourage them from following the URL to its destination.
One solution to this integration problem is to manually code routing instructions on a content provider's web server using standard server redirect protocols to re-route a URL request to an alternative address. Web developers commonly use this technique to re-route URLs after activities such as redesigning a website or moving to a new URL structure. These types of server redirects are normally coded by website developers who have the technical knowledge to so configure web servers like Apache or Microsoft IIS. As a result, if a URL from another website to the company's website is broken (due to a change of site URL patterns) or if the marketing staff of a content provider wishes to use a more user friendly URL for a campaign (say in a print piece, TV commercial, or SMS message), this requires a request be submitted to their respective web development team, who then must prioritize the request against competing demands, and eventually manually-code the URL redirect change on the web server. Thus, manually-coding this type of conditional user routing and flexibility can be inefficient, time consuming, and generally cost prohibitive for companies to build and maintain with their standard web development resources. A need therefore exists to provide internet content providers with a more efficient method to create, manage, and execute these types of URL routing activities.
As it relates to detecting and opening mobile applications from a web page, alternative subroutines can also be programmed to open apps. This does not solve the integration problem either, however. If an application's “URL scheme” is hard coded into the HTML of a web page as a hyperlink, this line of code causes a device to attempt to open the app. For example, Facebook's URL scheme for its app is currently “fb://” which could be linked via an HTML command <a href=“fb://”>link here</a>. A device reading “fb://” will attempt to open the Facebook app. However, if the user accessing the URL does not have the Facebook app installed on his mobile device, accessing the URL produces an error—and a negative experience. Thus, a need exists to detect in advance whether an error would be produced and to instruct the mobile device to avoid the error and ‘broken’ links if an application is present on the device that would not result in an error.
Some mobile operating systems (such as Android) and some browsers already have the capability to give a prompt to the mobile device user accessing a URL, where the prompt offers the mobile device user a choice to open the corresponding application, if the browser determines a corresponding application is installed on the device. But by simply opening a mobile application, rather than opening a specific page within that application, internet content providers forfeit valuable control over the user experience. For example, if a device opens a social media application (such as Facebook), if it is installed, specifically to a company's Facebook profile page, rather than merely opening the Facebook application itself, this specific and direct connection improves the user experience and thereby increases the likelihood the end user will “like” or share information about the company, or interact with the company. This functionality can have particular advantages for companies marketing products and services on the internet because it allows marketers to provide the most relevant internet content to users faster, and may enable marketers to increase mobile advertising conversion rates, application downloads, engagement with social media platforms, and ultimately overall sales. Because it is desirable for internet content providers to have maximum control over the user experience and interaction with the content, a need exists to be able to directly connect users to an appropriate page within the desired mobile application.
Ultimately, providing enhanced user experiences and giving internet content providers maximum control over how users experience internet content will allow content providers to realize more economic benefits by routing users to the media best suited for their device. These economic benefits can be even more valuable if internet content providers can enhance user experiences and manage routing in a cost effective and efficient manner. Thus, a further need exists to integrate application detection capability with URL routing management, so that internet content providers can provide a maximum number of users with a desirable experience in a cost efficient manner.